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Are you using passphrases? Is it worth it? (discuss.tchncs.de)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

80 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Nowadays, most people use password managers (hopefully). However, there are still some passwords that you need to memorize, like master password (for a password manager), phone lock, wifi password, etc.

Security wise, can passphrase reach the strength of a good password without getting so long that it defeats the purpose of even using it?

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (16 children)

can passphrase reach the strength of a good password

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/936/

I’d love to hear from someone well versed in security if this is legit or significant weaknesses exist, but the math seems to check out as far as I can tell.

[+] [email protected] -2 points 8 months ago (9 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (4 children)

i also dont really get it. the bitwarden pw tester says it will take 14 years to crack "its.a.beautiful.day", write beautiful with 2 t`s and it will take "centuries"? 🧐

but yes i still use them. but always with numbers and random characters in between and words from multiple languages or fantasy words.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

That would be because the pattern on the first password are correctly spelled words and the way passwords are cracked offline (when there's a leak of data being sold somewhere) is that they use dictionary attacks.

This means that a big file containing all known words, and can also include known used passwords from past leaks, is used to try a lot of combinations. A combination of good words that appear 1:1 in these word lists will score way lower in terms of difficulty for a computer to crack. A simple script can add spaces and periods (like your example) between words and they WOULD get your password. By adding only one random character that doesn't fit a pattern (just like your second 't'), you basically force the cracker to try all possible combinations of all characters for the length of your password, which is WAY more difficult.

TLDR: There are more combinations of aaaaaaa, aaaaaab, aaaaaac then there are of matching words together for the same length of password (one.one, one.two, one.three)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

In other words, don’t use “correct horse battery staple” because that’s probably in every word list by now

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

but even 14 years seems long for a pharase that is said and written millions of times per day. and if those crackers can make billions of guesses per second how can they not guess both variants within minutes?

related question. how to make a good password bettter? adding a few extra special symbols like "µ£₹" or one long word like "freshwatercrocodiletesticles"?